The One You Feed - Eric Barker: Success and Happiness

Starting point is 00:00:00 The story we tell ourselves is critical in terms of whether we persist, how we feel, and the person that we are and the person we become. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think ring true. And yet for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life worth living.

Starting point is 00:00:52 This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really Know Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, And does your dog truly love you? We have the answer.

Starting point is 00:01:27 Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Eric Barker, whose humorous practical blog, Barking Up the Wrong Tree, presents science-based answers and expert insight on how to be awesome at life. Over 300,000 people subscribe to his weekly newsletter and his content is syndicated by Time Magazine, The Week, and Business Insider. In his book, Barking Up the Wrong Tree, Eric reveals the extraordinary science behind what actually determines success and most importantly,

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Starting point is 00:02:57 which is where our Facebook group is. And you can interact with other listeners of the show and get support in feeding your good wolf. Thanks again for listening. And here's the interview with Eric Barker. Hi, Eric. Welcome to the show. It's great to be here. I have read your blog for a while called Barking Up the Wrong Tree, and recently you wrote a book called Barking Up the Wrong Tree, the surprising science behind why everything you know about success is mostly wrong.

Starting point is 00:03:27 So we'll get into the book in a minute. And as I was joking with you before we started, I actually broke the Amazon highlight limit for your book. So lots and lots of great stuff. We'll only get to a fraction of it. And so I'll encourage listeners to get the book. It's wonderful. But let's start like we always do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson, and he says, in life there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. The grandson stops and thinks about it for a second and looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in

Starting point is 00:04:15 your life and in the work that you do. I've actually had that parable in a blog post I did, so I take it very seriously. And for me, you know, I, I believe that, you know, we have patterns of behavior and we, we have habits and you can take that all the way down to the neuroscience level. And, you know, if you spend more time angry, if you spend more time, you know, upset, if you spend more time in envy than you do in joy and gratitude, it's going to become a habitual pattern of behavior. And, you know, I think it's something we have to be cognizant of, that it's always in us, that ability to change, to choose which side of ourself we're going to be. So it's something I'm very cognizant of

Starting point is 00:04:55 and something I try and, I definitely try and think about which wolf I'm feeding. Excellent. Let's start with the word success, because your book is about success. But I'd like to go kind of to the end of the book where you talk about what success is and how to measure it. So let's start there and then we can work our way back from there. So what is success in the sense that you're using it? recommend that, you know, people need a personal definition of success that given the modern era, you know, you go on the internet, you watch TV and you are seeing the 0.001% most, uh, the richest, most beautiful, most intelligent, most accomplished, accomplished people. So we're constantly seeing unrealistic standards, uh, of a lot of definitions of success. And with the work-life balance issue, now with technology, we're able to work 24-7. And that sets up a very dangerous paradigm where we're shown these unattainable levels of success. And we're given the ability, if we so choose, to work 24-7.

Starting point is 00:06:01 So it's incumbent upon all of us to have a personal definition of success, to say when is enough for me. And I talk about the issue. There's some research by Nash and Stevenson at Harvard showing that it takes a balance of four metrics to have a well-rounded life. You need to not only be concerned with success in terms of money or achievement, you know, or success in terms of just relationships or happiness, you know, because we need to be able to pay the rent. And we also need to have people who love us and who we love. Uh, and you know, one or the other, uh, is not, is not going to cut it. Nash and Stevenson found that people need for, they need to be, they need to be accomplished in four metrics. Number one is

Starting point is 00:06:46 happiness. In other words, do you enjoy what you're doing? Achievement, are you achieving your goals? Number three is significance, is what you're doing benefiting the ones you love? And fourth is legacy. In some small way, are you making the world a better place? So I think success is something that should be personal and has to be personal. Because if we take the off-the-rack definition of success, then we're going to be chasing those people on TV to completely unattainable standards, and we're not going to live a happy life. Yeah, I love the way you put it. I'm just going to read a quote from the book. You have to make a decision.

Starting point is 00:07:23 The world will not draw a line. You must. You need to ask, what do I want? Otherwise, you're only going to get what they want. Sorry to have to break this to you, but in today's world, having it all isn't possible when others determine the limits in each category. And I think that's just a great way of stating that you you're right, we have to take this on ourselves to decide when is enough. And I also like the idea of, you know, evaluating life by one metric turning out to be, you say it turns out to be a key problem. We can't use just one yardstick. And that just, when I read that, it just seemed so obvious on one hand and yet very profound on the others that I don't think that's what a lot of us do. Yeah, it's a problem. A problem they call it the, you know, having a collapsing metric

Starting point is 00:08:11 where basically we try and collapse all of success and happiness into one metric. And of course, that metric is usually dollars simply because our society promotes that, but also because dollars are easy to count. You know, it's very difficult to say how good a father was I today? How good a husband, you know, was I today? You only get an employee review at a job typically annually, but it's very easy to look at your bank balance or look in your wallet, you know, and count dollars and have a video game style score of how you're doing. And so it often, you know, we collapse it into one metric. And as we know, or I hope we know, uh, you know, money is nice, uh, but it, you know, it, it's, it's not everything. And, and having, trying to collapse all of success into one metric is, is not a good way to go about

Starting point is 00:08:58 things. Yep. And I'm always a fan of the middle way with things like finding the middle path. And I think that idea of, on one hand, people say, well, money doesn't make you happy, right? So some people go all the way, you know, on the, well, what's the point? And then other people, everything is about money. And what I like about what you're saying is money's in there, but there are other factors that we have to consider also if we want to truly have a life that makes sense for us and meets our own definition of success. Absolutely. I mean, there's plenty of research that shows money can buy happiness, but it's not in the way we typically think, you know, in terms of, you know, buying a big house or a Ferrari or something like that, when people use their money to buy themselves more free time, so to hire someone to say clean their house versus doing it themselves, you know, that does promote happiness. When people spend money on others, that promotes happiness. You know, there are ways whereby money brings happiness, but it's not the end-all be-all. It's usually as a lever towards something

Starting point is 00:10:07 else, towards when you're buying gifts for other people, you're using money to enhance your relationships. And the research shows that relationships are the number one source of happiness. So the green rectangle does not deliver happiness directly. If you use it in the right way, it can facilitate happiness. Often we don't use it in the right way, it can facilitate happiness. Often we don't use it in the right way, but it can facilitate happiness. And I would argue that money is good defensively. It certainly prevents problems that can reduce happiness. of some of the research, you know, basically shows that once you can pay your bills, once you can can, you know, are protected from being in debt, from not being able to pay the rent, know, that extra hour at the office. How much do you make per hour? How much would, how much happiness would spending that time with friends or family bring you? So if you do that math, you know, roughly in your head, you know, Hey, if you are an investment

Starting point is 00:11:16 banker, perhaps, perhaps that extra hour would bring you enough money to, to overcome the happiness of relations. But for most people, relationships bring so much more money than happiness that chasing money is not the good way to go. Right. And you say the problem that in the quest for what makes me feel good, there's no finish line. And I think that's what things like money or other success metrics for me have shown is that if I'm not evaluating the way I'm looking at the whole thing, I reach one, one goalpost and then I just reset the next and I reset the next, you know, I got, you know, for me, one of them is downloads of show, right? So I get X number and then all of

Starting point is 00:11:56 a sudden that's normal and I need the next number and the next number. And so, and I think money can very much and has been for me very much the same thing in certain cases. It never really ends. You know, we're always going to want things. There's no kind of end to it there. That's why we need to decide what's enough, you know, and to sit there and really think about it, as opposed to wait until that next shiny thing pops up and then, oh, we want something new again. You know, or the promotion gets dangled in front of you, and then all of a sudden you're working more than you wanted to. No, it's something we really need

Starting point is 00:12:29 to think about in advance, because in the spare of the moment, as with many things, in the spare of the moment, you're probably not going to make the best decision if you haven't thought it through beforehand. Yep. And it would be easier if those things didn't give a temporary boost, right? I think that's what's so challenging, is they tend to work, at least for me, briefly. So there's a brief bump, and then, you know, I think they call it adaptation, right? Then I'm kind of back to where I was before. And I think that's what makes it a little bit, if it just didn't work at all, it'd be really easy to dismiss it, but it works briefly. And I think that becomes confusing. Absolutely. You know, it's because it's new, it's novel. And,

Starting point is 00:13:03 you know, our brains like things that are better new and novel. You know, it's new. It's novel. And our brains like things that are new and novel. It's very simple. If you continued to live the lifestyle that you did after high school or in college and you lived an average career and got pay raises and got promotions, you'd be sitting pretty. You'd probably have a ton of money in the bank, but that's not what happens. What happens is, yes, that hedonic adaptation where, you know, okay, this apartment's not big enough. I want a bigger apartment. Okay, well, now I don't want an apartment anymore. I want a house. Okay, you know, I want a bigger house because now I'm going to have a family. And, you know, my car is not a shame anymore. I want a new car. And so you keep wanting those things. And, you know, it's very often, you know, people find, you know, all too often, you know, that their needs seem to always line up with the level of income they're at. And we could prevent that, but we don't want to. And, you know, and I'm not recommending that everybody live their entire lives like a college student, but it is an option. But we choose not

Starting point is 00:14:01 to do it. And again, it's because we have this, this, you know, we want novel things, we want nice things, but it's usually because we haven't taken the time to really sit through what is really going to make us happy, you know, in the long run versus that immediate next kind of, oh, wow, cool boost. And, you know, it's the same thing, you know, food's tasty. And, and so people, you know, we like the way food tastes and, you know, it's the same thing. You know, food's tasty. And so people, you know, we like the way food tastes. And, you know, and now we have an obesity epidemic. Right. Let's shift gears. You're talking about how we like novelty. And so let's talk about one of the things that you cover in the book is how turning the things that we do in our life where we can into games can be very

Starting point is 00:14:42 helpful and what it is about those strategies that actually make it work. Yeah, it's really interesting because we all have lots of, you know, lots of things we do that are very frustrating and difficult and we fail at them a bunch of times and it drives us crazy. If you look at, you know, like video games, they can be frustrating. You fail a lot of times and then people love them. And it's great. And it's very interesting to look at. And sometimes we get that feeling. Sometimes we say, gee, what am I doing wrong? And all of a sudden, you're trying to fix the sink, and it becomes like a detective story. And what is wrong here? Oh, let me try this. Oh, let me try that. And

Starting point is 00:15:20 it becomes this compelling, and I can't go to bed until I get this thing done. And we've all had that feeling. And it's interesting when you look at the research on games, it's basically a framework that is superimposed upon different situations. Because games can be very difficult, very frustrating. Your taxes are the same way, but doing taxes is awful, and video games are fun. Why is this? Well, it's because there are a number of elements that games always possess. They're winnable, first and foremost, by design.

Starting point is 00:15:50 We do lots of things and we don't know if we actually can achieve this. You know, games, you know, if you've purchased a video game, there is a way to win. Somebody can do that. And that gives us an optimistic feeling towards spending the time and completing it. Past that, games always have novelty. There's a first level and a second level, and there's new enemies, and there might be new weapons, or whatever you're using in the game that keeps it fresh. It's not the same thing over and over and over and over and over again.

Starting point is 00:16:18 And past that, games have goals, where you have to achieve this, you have to do that. And having goals focuses your attention, allows you to get into more have to achieve this, you have to do that. And having goals focuses your attention, allows you to get into more of a flow state. And that's what video games are pretty much designed to do is put you into a flow state. And past that, games provide instantaneous, you know, easily understandable feedback. You did well, you didn't do well, you got a point, you lost a point. It's very quick, you know, very quick versus it's like you think about your job. point, it's very quick, you know, very quick versus it's like you think about your job. You know, most people get an annual review. That is not very fast, very good feedback as to what they're doing wrong. And if people think back to their first few months on the job, you probably

Starting point is 00:16:56 weren't, you know, bored because, you know, you see other people who are doing well at this job. Okay, it's winnable. It's novel. You've never been at this place, this company doing this thing before. You have goals. People are telling you what they want you to do. And you're getting feedback because at first you're probably screwing a bunch of stuff up or not doing it as well as everyone else and you need to learn. But the problem is with most jobs is that we see that very quickly, you know, those things fade out. You know, you're doing the same things over and over again. The novelty is gone. The goals might be unclear. You're only getting feedback annually and you start to look around. You're not getting promoted and you're wondering if this game really is winnable. So, you know, there are certain things

Starting point is 00:17:38 that if we try and take, you know, those elements and apply them to deliberately to a lot of the activities which we find frustrating or difficult. You know, winnable, novelty, goals, feedback. If we try and apply those specifically to a lot of tasks that are difficult, we can actually make them more enjoyable and increase our level of persistence and grit. Yeah, I've found there's a music program out there called Musician, and that doesn't sound right. But anyway, it's a game that you can play on your iPhone, but you're using a real guitar. It is really teaching you to play the guitar, but it has exactly the things you're describing. The feedback is literally instant.

Starting point is 00:18:18 It tells you whether you played that note right or not. And I find that I can practice so much longer with that. I just get lost in it in the same way that I don't get lost in playing the guitar. I think it's because it, like you said, it's, I don't know if it's winnable, but you're always making progress. You're always changing and the feedback is instantaneous. And I have found it to be an amazing way to continue to practice playing the guitar. All it is is making a game out of it. Well, I mean, Teresa Maboli's research at Harvard showed that the single most motivating thing is a feeling of progress and meaningful work. It's when people feel like, you know, I moved the needle forward.

Starting point is 00:18:58 You know, today I got closer to my goal. I'm making progress in something that matters. That's what produces, you know, the greatest amount of motivation. And, you know, and unfortunately in many situations, you know, that's, what's lacking is, you know, the goal might be unclear or we just might not be getting, you know, getting any feedback at all. And so it's, it's interesting to me that, you know, as you're describing, you know, playing the guitar, you have a general amount of feedback. You can listen to what you're playing and get that. But to have that really crystallized and

Starting point is 00:19:28 immediate, you know, that provides that much more motivation for you to want to keep playing that game as opposed as opposed to just normally playing the guitar. I think the other thing that is so helpful is it advances me at a very slow skill level. I've heard about flow is, you know, getting the flow. One of the things is just the right amount of skill level. I've heard about flow is, you know, getting into flow, one of the things is just the right amount of challenge level. And I find like when I'm practicing guitar otherwise, I either undershoot or overshoot that mark a lot. Either I'm not pushing myself at all, or I've just gone to a place where I'm like, I can't do that. And this game just sort of slowly brings me along in a way that is really useful. Yeah, when you look at, it was Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

Starting point is 00:20:06 who did most of the research on flow, and that's exactly what he found, which is it's operating in this bound where if there's too little challenge, you get bored. If there's too much challenge, you're not doing well and you get frustrated and you wanna quit. And so you need to stay optimally to be in flow. You want to be at that just that right level of challenge where your skills are being taxed, but not to the point where

Starting point is 00:20:31 it feels futile. But the important thing, and this is what video games do so well that that life doesn't always do, is that as you as your skills progress, the challenge needs to needs to progress. you, as your skills progress, the challenge needs to progress. And that's something that very often many jobs are lacking, is that with time, your ability to do the job improves, the challenges don't, we become bored, listless, and all of a sudden, you know, the vibrancy, the interest, the motivation in doing jobs starts to wane. Hey, y'all. I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations.

Starting point is 00:21:52 We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity. It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready.

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Starting point is 00:25:00 You talk about the idea that a lot of us, when we're bored at work, what we need is to re-engage at work. Our default strategy is to pull back, try and do less, not be as involved, but that the way through that is to get more involved and more into it. And I found that to be so true for me. The difference between me resisting doing something and kind of figuring out how I can get around it versus diving in is night and day for me on the exact same job. Very often, you know, it's because the instructions were often given or the difficulties were presented with, you know, don't always have that proper level. So we can work to reframe, you know, the goals to provide that proper level of challenge or to change the goals altogether, where if you have to do a PowerPoint presentation, you know, it might be something you've done a thousand times. But if you challenge yourself that, hey, you know what, I want to make this presentation much more visual.

Starting point is 00:26:00 How few words can I use? Can I use more images that really get my point across or get the emotional valence across? I want to do this in a way that's going to be like X instead of Y, where all of a sudden you start framing it and making it more challenging, challenging in a way that's interesting to you. Now, all of a sudden, you can achieve the goals that your job has put ahead of you, and you can make it more interesting and challenging to yourself by, again, adding your own set of goals to it. And this is something that's not that hard to do. And most people have some level of latitude, like I said, to focus on

Starting point is 00:26:38 improving your performance versus just achieving the completion of the presentation adds a level of challenge that can make it interesting and motivating instead of the 400th presentation that you've done like this. And I always find there's room, even if the job itself doesn't provide that, that I can find it in the people I'm around and seeing if I can, like making a challenge out of, can I make people smile more? Or can I make somebody's day better? I can, like making a challenge out of, can I make people smile more? Or can I make somebody's day better? I mean, there's lots of different ways to give ourselves a place to engage deeper versus withdrawal. Yeah. And withdrawal is the path to burnout because what the research shows is that burnout isn't merely an issue of too much because when

Starting point is 00:27:22 you work too hard, too long, hey, you take a break. OK, you're fine when you easily recover from working too hard. That's not true burnout. True burnout, it turns out, is actually the flip side of grit. It's when you start to feel, you know, pessimistic about your job. You start to feel like I'm not getting anywhere. This isn't doing anything. And basically you start to withdraw. You do a worse job. You start to feel like I'm not getting anywhere. This isn't doing anything. And basically you start to withdraw. You do a worse job. You know, so of course, what do you get? Worse feedback, worse performance, which only increases the feeling of futility. And then that produces a persistently negative attitude towards the job, towards being there. And that's what creates true burnout where people just don't even want to be there

Starting point is 00:28:06 and think there's no point to it. You know, I mean, obviously, vacations are good. Short term, taking breaks is good. But when we just completely disengage and don't care anymore, that's really difficult because that doesn't actually make us feel better in the long term that leads to burnout, as opposed to reengaging, finding a new way to perceive it, to reframe the work, and make it interesting. You know, that's the path towards reinvigorating yourself. Yeah, it's interesting because I do this show, and I also do some coaching associated with it and different things, and that's what I would like to be doing full-time at some juncture, but I'm not there yet. So I have other things that I do work-wise. And I have found that when I am resenting those things,

Starting point is 00:28:46 and I am trying to get by with the minimum, I am just miserable. But if I just go ahead and engage in it and really give it my all when I'm there, all of a sudden I have more energy in general, even to pursue the things that are outside of that. And it's sort of counterintuitive to me, but it's proven to be 100% true. Yeah, I think it comes back to that research. Like I said, Teresa Maboli, it's progress in meaningful work. And so, you know, there's two questions there to ask yourself. Are you doing work that's meaningful, or are you just doing busy work? And then, are you moving the needle forward? Which means you have to know what's forward, what's the goal, and am I getting closer to it? And in Dan

Starting point is 00:29:25 Pink's great book, Drive, he talks about three qualities that lead to motivation, which is autonomy, mastery, and purpose. And that is, number one, do we have autonomy? Do we have the freedom to make some decisions where we feel like we're in control and we actually, what we do matters? Once again, that avoiding the feeling of futility. I have autonomy. I make a difference. Second is mastery. And that's that, do I feel like I'm getting better? Do I feel like I'm improving? And third is purpose. Again, that meaningful issue. Do I feel like this is actually providing some value? This is actually having an impact on the world. When you combine those two, you just see that none of these elements are withdraw, do less, procrastinate. You know,

Starting point is 00:30:07 they're all forward looking. And very often, you know, our brains get lazy, our brains get tired. But, you know, there's, as the old saying goes, a change is as good as a rest. You know, when we find a novel problem, something that makes us curious, makes us want to engage, you know, that becomes the secret to really diving down. And then things that from a distance look difficult, close up, they often pull us into a flow state if we give them the chance and we engage them in the right way. Yeah. So all of this really leads us to another part of the book that you talk about, and is also another subject that is probably one of the most talked about things on this show, which is that all of this stuff is a story to a certain extent, right? We are telling ourselves stories about what has meaning and what

Starting point is 00:30:55 doesn't. Talk to me about telling stories. Stories are basically the operating system of the human brain. We see our lives as, you know, a story. And across the board, this is seen again and again. When you look at the research on parenting, if a child knows the family history, where they came from, and there is this, you know, a story, a lineage, kids do much better in school. They avoid drugs. They do better overall. They feel like they're part of something. They're part of a story. John Gottman, who's, you know, led the research in terms of successful relationships and marriages, the best predictor of whether a couple will get divorced is simply asking them to tell their story. And if it's a positive, uplifting story, it might involve challenges and difficulties,

Starting point is 00:31:38 but they were resolved, they were overcome. If they tell a positive story versus a negative story, you know, that's a great predictor that the marriage is going to last. You know, how we talk about ourselves. If when you look at the research by Tim Wilson at UVA on, you know, what therapists are actually doing, a big part of therapy is actually story editing, where we are reinterpreting the story of our lives. When you get depressed, you feel like I'm a failure, I'm never going to do anything, look at my past, I've done this wrong and this wrong and this wrong. Well, you've been alive for decades. There's plenty of examples of you doing bad, but there's

Starting point is 00:32:14 also plenty of examples of you doing good. But when you tell your personal story, which ones do you choose to highlight? And the negatives are, did you learn something from them? Was that a period of growth? Could that be seen as a positive? How we interpret those stories is really critical. And, you know, a work by James Pennebaker, University of Texas at Austin, he showed that, you know, if when by just simply sitting down for 20 minutes a day for four days, you know, and writing about difficult, you know, a tragic event or, you know a heartbreak or some kind of difficult issue we're struggling with, when people have to write, because when we ruminate, that's bad.

Starting point is 00:32:52 That leads to depression. But when we write, we have to structure our thoughts. And typically what happens, we structure them into a story. And merely by taking that time to structure it out, to make sense of it, which is what writing requires, people often feel much, much better and they're able to, you know, get past difficult things. Again and again, you see that the story we tell ourselves, you know, is critical in terms of whether we persist, how we feel, and the person that we are and the person we become.

Starting point is 00:33:22 Yeah, and I love what you said there, that in our lives there are good and there are bad things, because I don't think it's a matter of, like, making up things that aren't true, right? We don't believe things that aren't true. It's really where are we going to put the focus? Because since we are constructing it, why not construct a story that is useful? You talk about the term cognitive reappraisal. It sounds like that's just another way of saying changing our story and changing our reference to it. We have all engaged the bad wolf in terms of being angry or envious or negative. And we've also all had plenty of times where we were good people, we were altruistic, we were kind. And when we tell the story, are we telling the story of the good wolf or are we telling the story of the bad wolf? Which one do we really see ourselves as?

Starting point is 00:34:18 Which one do we perceive to be the more accurate depiction of who we are? So in that way, I think the story you tell yourself is really critical. So those are the stories that we tell ourselves broadly. There's also what's going on in our head at any given minute. You say between 300 and 1,000 words is what we're saying to ourself every minute. And those words can be positive or negative. One of the things I thought was really interesting in the book was talking about Navy SEALs and the training and how high the dropout rate is. But the people who learned to speak themselves positively, that changed dramatically. Basically, after 9-11,

Starting point is 00:34:55 the military needed more elite operators. And obviously, the training is very difficult. The vetting process is very difficult. So they couldn't lower standards because then you, they wouldn't be elite anymore. Uh, so they were trying to figure out how can we help more people qualify in a way that's, that's not lowering their standards. So the Navy did something that they'd never really done before and asked, what are the things that helps, uh, help us be gritty and help us, uh, persist. And, uh, they came up with four. Then the number one was positive self-talk, where we have that voice in our head is telling us positive things. Again, not necessarily delusional. And we're not talking about the secret here, where just because you wish it, the reality is going to warp and change. No. But having a positive voice in your head, because what you see across the board, even

Starting point is 00:35:45 including research in physiology, your brain quits much quicker than your muscles do. When we look at the levels of glycogen, that's the sugar that your muscles actually use to power themselves. When people say, I can't run any further or I can't lift any more weights, when they actually check the muscle, they often find that the glycogen is far from depleted. You know, the muscles are not at their breaking point. The brain acts as a governor, you know, in many ways, because the brain doesn't want you to get hurt. So it quits long before your body does. But when we have this positive self-talk that you can move forward, and that also ties into, I talk about in the book, the idea of self-compassion. When we are compassionate with ourselves, when the voice in our head is warm and

Starting point is 00:36:29 soothing and accepting rather than, you know, getting, we get angry with ourselves, we punish ourselves, we beat ourselves up, you know, we get much better results from when it's positive, soothing, and supportive than when we get angry with ourselves. Yeah, the actual line you have in the book is between saying things to ourselves like, I can do it, or, oh God, I can't take this anymore. And that hits home so much, that distinction in my mind of when I'm pushing myself, like, what is it I'm saying? And as soon as it starts to get into, I can't take this anymore, is when I start to become very unhappy. And it doesn't have to happen just in exercise. I will notice that kind of come up just as an underlying sort of repetitive

Starting point is 00:37:12 voice that's going on, whether it's I can't take this anymore, or this is terrible. And when I can catch it, it's so easy for me to sort of reframe that and go, oh, wait a second. No, that's not the case at all. Like, yes, I can do know, I can do this. It's not as nearly as bad as what this almost unconscious voice is saying. Yeah. And I mean, that ties into a lot of the, uh, the, what comes, uh, the work in mindfulness, which originally comes to us from Buddhism, but, you know, has now, uh, you know, a lot of it's been scientifically validated in terms of mindfulness where where that voice you know doesn't have to be us you know in the same way that you know our body does things our brain produces thoughts you know if you if you broke your arm you would not say i am broken you would say your arm is broken well your brain produces thoughts sometimes those thoughts are

Starting point is 00:38:00 crazy sometimes we don't listen to them sometimes they they're silly. Yet, all too often, you know, our brain produces these thoughts and we immediately identify with them, you know. And when I interviewed Joseph Goldstein, one of the leading voices in terms of mindfulness, you know, he said the first step very often is listening to that voice in a distance sort of objective way and then asking, is this useful? Because our brain produces all these crazy thoughts and we dismiss many of them. But sometimes, you know, we listen to it and we don't need to. That voice isn't us. That is our brain. Your arm is broken. You're not broken. Your brain produces thoughts. They are not necessarily you. So we don't need to take all of those thoughts as seriously. We don't need to identify with them as us. We can say, oh, hey, that's my brain being crazy again, you know, and to take a step back and listen to that voice, you know, as not us and ask, is this useful? Is this something I want to move forward with? And putting a little gap in

Starting point is 00:39:06 there where we take a second and rather than being reactive to whatever thought occurs to us, we choose to respond, to respond thoughtfully as opposed to blindly reacting. Very often, we make better choices, you know, that do represent who we want to be. Again, much like the podcast, you know, taking that pause, do I want to feed. Again, much like the podcast, you know, taking that pause, do I want to feed the bad wolf or the good wolf? Hey y'all, I'm Dr. Joy Harden Bradford, host of Therapy for Black Girls. And I'm thrilled to invite you to our January Jumpstart series for the third year running. All January, I'll be joined by inspiring guests who will help you kickstart your personal growth with actionable ideas and real conversations.

Starting point is 00:40:22 We're talking about topics like building community and creating an inner and outer glow. I always tell people that when you buy a handbag, it doesn't cover a childhood scar. You know, when you buy a jacket, it doesn't reaffirm what you love about the hair you were told not to love. So when I think about beauty, it's so emotional because it starts to go back into the archives of who we were, how we want to see ourselves and who we know ourselves to be and who we can be. So a little bit of past, present and future, all in one idea, soothing something from the past. And it doesn't have to be always an insecurity.

Starting point is 00:40:55 It can be something that you love. All to help you start 2025 feeling empowered and ready. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls starting on January 1st on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. if I had to boil it down to one thing was that recognition like, oh, I don't have to believe those thoughts. I can step away from them. I can notice them. And for me, that was such a big unlock because I can only imagine now thinking back, what a mess my head must have been. That's something we really need to think about because we already have that perspective in our vocabulary. When we're drunk, we don't take everything we do or say seriously.

Starting point is 00:41:52 When we're angry, we'll say. When you're hungry, you act differently. You might have a very short temper. If you haven't gotten enough sleep, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to snap at you. I really was tossing and turning last night. We understand that there are different states we're in that cause us to to act, quote unquote, and I wasn't myself. You know, so we have this perspective and we we pull it out again with drunkenness, with tiredness, with anger. You know, we do have the ability to say I did that, but that wasn't me.

Starting point is 00:42:22 And we need to actually broaden that, you know, somewhat and say that there are many thoughts going through our head. We don't need to identify with all of them. We can pick and choose. And when we take the time to do that, we often make much better choices. I totally agree. I want to change directions back to, we were talking about withdrawal. And one of the things you talk about is it says research shows we don't often choose to do what really makes us happy. We choose what's easy. And I'm not going to choose to take on the challenge of trying to say his name, which you did earlier, the guy who wrote Flow. I'll let you do that again, because that's braver than I am. But it's his research that we're talking about here. Yeah, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He did research,

Starting point is 00:43:08 talking about here. Yeah, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He did research showing that, I believe specifically, it was teenagers and it was watching TV, socializing, or playing sports. And what he found was that TV made them least happy, socializing made them more happy, and playing sports made them the happiest. And when given the option, teenagers chose in the exact wrong order. They were much more likely to pick watching TV, you know, slightly less likely to pick socializing, and then far less likely to pick sports. And I think we see that across the board, where, you know, very often we get tired, we think, oh, I can't do this. I don't. And we make the easy choice. We don't make the good choice, the long-term choice. And this is something, again, where kind of like pausing and reflecting. at remembering what made us happy. Now, some people would be quick to reject that out of hand. But when you look at the research that they've done in terms of how bad are Mondays really,

Starting point is 00:44:19 how great are Fridays really, how good do you really feel on your... And it turns out that Mondays aren't that bad. And the people don't actually feel like that. And we're quick to forget this. And we do it all the time. I mean, where, you know, when you feel really depressed, you know, after, you know, lose a job, the end of a relationship, what's the natural feel? Oh, my God, the sadness is never going to end. These kind of things happen all the time. And yet every time it's never going to end. I'm going to feel this way forever. And we're very bad often at remembering what made us really unhappy and what made us, you know, very happy. And if we actually take the time to write down, to record what makes us extremely happy, what makes us less happy, and then, And then follow the script as opposed to trusting our very fallible memories, we can actually end up living much happier lives, making better choices.

Starting point is 00:45:12 Yeah. You say without a plan, we do what's passive and easy, not what is really fulfilling. And then you go on to talk about another study that shows that managing your free time is associated with a higher quality of life. It's not so much about increasing it, but scheduling that time in advance. And for me, I find that so true. If I wake up on a weekend and I know kind of what I'm doing through the day, I really enjoy the whole day. But if I wake up and I have no idea what I'm doing, I tend to fret. I don't really know what to do with myself and I feel very aimless. And so having a plan and laying it out makes such a difference. And now it looks like there's, you know, some studies that show that.

Starting point is 00:45:51 I think we have all had days where we're happy to have the day off. And what's the first thing you tell yourselves? I'm going to do nothing. And, you know, you waste the day. And then we often feel like that. Where did the day go? You know, I haven't really gotten started. I just kind of sat around and watched TV, you know, versus that,

Starting point is 00:46:13 that Christmas morning feeling where, you know, I'm anticipating this, this is great. And, you know, and the research shows that very often, uh, anticipation, uh, provides us with more happiness than the actual event does, you know, anticipating, uh, the vacation, you know, the vacation, you're going to get a month or two months to say, oh my God, it's going to be so great. And that's happiness. There is no such thing as fake happiness. If you feel good, you feel good. And so to have two months of anticipating that vacation, that is real joy. That's real happiness. And so again, if we take the time, I know most people have a knee-jerk negative response to planning their free time. I don't want to have to, you know, do this. Yes, but when we make plans with friends, we can look forward to them and we enjoy the company of our friends as opposed to very often you sit on the couch, you watch Netflix, there's nothing good on, you surf around on the Internet.

Starting point is 00:47:01 I mean, when you look at the research in terms of television, you know, actually, for the most part, it shows that it's actually similar to low-grade depression. You know, it's very often we're not watching extremely entertaining stuff. It's the desire to get away from work, from being told what to do, but it doesn't actually bring us much joy, versus when we make plans with friends, you know, not only are those, you know, often much more enjoyable than just sitting around aimlessly doing nothing, but also we get the opportunity to anticipate them. And again, very often the anticipation is the best part. Yep. And without a plan, it is easy just to default to nothing. Well, Eric, thanks so much. That was a great conversation. I love the book. So much of it is very much in

Starting point is 00:47:45 line with the things that we talk about on the show. I will have links in the show notes to the book where people can find you. Great read, and I had a great conversation. No, thank you. I really appreciate you helping me get the word out about Barking Up the Wrong Tree, and it's been great talking to you. All right, thanks. Bye-bye. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to oneyoufeed.net slash support.

The One You Feed - Eric Barker: Success and Happiness

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